The real world, I realized, is, at times, overrated.
Here's the background to this trip: My boyfriend (BF) grows his own mushrooms. We started dating in early February, and one month later, all in love, decided to trip together. I'm posting this now and we've been together for 9 months. These days I help him with all the aspects of growing, and I LOVE it! We call them "the kids." :D We each dosed 2.5 grams, mixed with Haggen Dazs Strawberry sorbet.
The real world may be overrated, but it is where we live and most of us
must live here the majority of our days. But like going on vacation to
"get away from it all," a trip away from the real world every now and
then, is a good idea... One
minute you are laying on your back in paradise, the next minute getting
your thrills on a rollercoaster, the next getting drunk at the bar...
All the while making connections with the ones there with you, seeing
them in a new light and learning about them almost as much as you are
learning about yourself.
The weekend was life-changing. It's hard to say since I felt pretty normal the next day,
pretty typical Monday morning mood and mindset... Yet I went so far
away from the real world, and learned so much, and saw so much, I I don't know exactly how this normal feeling was possible.
Perhaps with more trips like this I can really
come out this bad mood problem I have... I have never been happier or
had more fun than March 8th, 2008. I've never
felt more awakened or enlightened. I've never felt more in love or
connected to a person. I've never felt closer to that idea which I have
lusted after since first reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, my
desire to know every truth there ever was. Before my trip I'd never
felt so close to psychic. I've never felt more understanding, more tolerant, more loving... Nor have I felt so understood, tolerated and
loved. I have never been so far into my own mind. I have never traveled
so fast, in any sense of the word.
Saturday I went home and my boyfriend went to work. I did
laundry, cleaned my room, and did my taxes (I owed $81- lame). I got to my boyfriend's place around 7 or 8pm. He had got Haggen Dazs strawberry
sorbet to mix the mushrooms with. We crushed them up and mixed them
in.... I couldn't taste them, but he said he could... perhaps
because he recognized the flavor from eating them straight up in the
past. We finished the sorbet, put on Team America World Police, and sat
on the bed to wait for it to kick in. After about 15 minutes I started
to get pretty giggly... BF had said that could happen when I had
been asking a bunch of questions. I was very prone to laughing
uncontrollably for the rest of the night, but at some point I figured
out how to get a little more control over it. After a few more minutes
the walls started to move a little bit, and movement left waves and
wakes in the background. Some colors started to change, and I felt a
little restless and changed positions a lot. From all the laughing I
started crying, and cried pretty much the entire trip.
When things
really kicked in, everything changed. The space of the room and the
size of everything was different when I closed my eyes. What was close
to me was closer, and what was far away was further. If I had the
blanket in front of my face, with my eyes closed it was a huge, thick
wall of blanket surrounding me. If I was lying next to BF, with my
eyes closed he was bigger, thicker, more substantial. Maybe it's that I
was smaller. When I would open my eyes I'd be surprised at how small
everything was compared to the world when my eyes were closed. When I
would get over that initial shock, I would peer over the blanket (or BF's chest if we were laying together), and the opposite wall would
seem very far away, at least for the first few moments. Waves of nausea
and indigestion would hit and I would be uncomfortable, but when they
passed I was very happy again. When my mind started racing I tried to
explain every thought that drove through my head, but it was impossible
most of the time. I did talk a lot, though, when I could get my head
around an idea or epiphany long enough to form the words, and if my
mouth and voice were currently working. At times I could only nod or
shake my head, or grunt affirmatives or negatives, but it was fine... BF always knew what I was thinking and what I meant to say. My mind
raced so fast... Near the beginning of the intense part of the trip, I
would get upset at the idea that people on the outside of a trip would
not appreciate what they saw... Not that I felt they MUST understand,
but I felt like they would think we were stupid or misguided or
irresponsible, looking at us from a "sober" point of view. But just
awhile later I started to feel like it was okay, whatever anyone
thought of us. At that point, I started to feel like everything was
okay, and everything would be okay... This was happening as I was having epiphany
and epiphany, insight after insight, realization after amazing
realization. My mind was racing SO fast, and everything going through
it was calming, kind, and zen-like... I started to understand people
and realize why people do anything they may do, and I was okay with it. I
made connections between so many things in the world... It felt like I
made connections between everything, ever. I mentally embraced all
beliefs and creeds and ideas and the people who thought them, and the
more I learned and realized the more I felt like everything would be
okay, no matter what, forever. Whatever happened would be okay, and at
the same time nothing truly awful would happen. it was a wonderful
feeling. I was so happy and so content.
Closed-eye visuals were amazing, and looked and felt SO real.... It was an outdoor forest-like paradise. BF kept telling me to open my eyes, surely I was missing all the good stuff.... But I told him, no, don't worry, it's AMAZING in here, and I wish you could see it.
Open-eye visuals were also amazing. Team America was pretty funny, but when we put on FLCL is was out of this world... The animation is beautiful (and trippy!) even while sober, but while actually tripping it was just ourstandingly gorgeous. I recommend FLCL to anyone who even only slightly likes anime, or if you want something absolutely stunning to watch while tripping.
Every now and then he would want to look at my eyes and see how dilated they were, which was always good for a laugh. At one point
near the end of the intense part, we were laying together, just looking
at each other and talking... Philosophizing and analyzing and learning
about each other. He was not having as "happy" of a trip as me, and I
expressed regret at this a few times... but he assured me it was okay,
just that what he found inside wasn't always nice. I gushed to him, and
everything I said was absolutely true... I told him how wonderful he
was, that he was a good person, that it didn't matter what anyone else
thought, and living for himself isn't selfish, and only natural, and
that too many people in the world try to make everyone else believe
that they should fight against what is natural and what makes them
happy. He was very sweet the whole time... He asked me to keep him from
going crazy, and I assured him I would, but that even without me he
would not go crazy. I assured him he was only scared of ideas put in his head by
other people, and that what was inside of him really was wonderful and
exactly what should be there. He called me beautiful, and pretty... I
told him I loved him, then said "We haven't been saying that much the
last few days, have we? Why not?" I'm not sure what he said exactly...
But we ended up deciding it was okay... We both loved each other. I
said it's nice to hear it sometimes, but I had no doubts that he loved
me to it was okay.
We continued to lay there together, coming down
together and sliding back and forth between tripping and normality,
each slide a little further into reality, but not too far. I didn't
want to sit up because things felt too real... Laying down felt
wonderful, like I was in a different world, as if under water... Like the tripping world dripped off me if I stuck any part
of my body above the level of the blanket or BF's body. We had such a
connection then... We finished each other's sentences and thoughts, and
would each understand what the other meant when only a few words had
been uttered. I learned that he fears a darkness he thinks is inside of
him... Or perhaps fear is too strong of a word, because I think he is
brave and strong and determined... But maybe it makes him sad, or disappointed in himself. I tried to assure him he was "scared" of
something worse than what was really there, that what I saw was
wonderful and sweet and natural, nothing to be ashamed of, and
something I adored and cherished and admired. I seemed to make him feel
better with those words. He smiled a lot, more than I've ever seen him
smile before, I think. He was so, so sweet during this time of
connection... He was always stroking my hair or my face... He would say
sweet things, "I like you" or "You're so pretty," and some other things
I can't exactly recall. We expressed our love for each other with no
unsurety and no confusion. I kept saying how amazing this was, how
happy I was and how incredible I felt. Even though he was not having as euphoric a trip as me, he said he was happy I was having such a good
time.
Eventually we came down enough to get out of bed, and
walk around. We both went to the bathroom and felt much better- BF
explained this isn't uncommon and people have talked before about
having a bad trip, then going to the bathroom and realizing that's all
that was wrong. After that we sat on the floor and talked more... We
hooked up his amazing headphones to my iPod when he wanted to hear the
Flaming Lips song "Do You Realize." I didn't have the original version
but I had the Postal Service cover, which he liked. We listened to In
The Aeroplane Over the Sea... He was out of the room for some of it
(while in the bathroom), but we still sang some of it together. We
scrolled through my iPod and played lots of different things. He
started doing whip-its and at one point we went in the bathroom with 2
canister's worth of it in one balloon so he could see how blue his lips
turned. Coming out of the bathroom he had what was apparently a really
awesome color hallucination, it lasted about 10 seconds.
We
came down some more and decided to to play Wii and eat some pretzel
goldfish. We played for awhile and then decided to go to bed. We might
have made love except that I pulled a muscle in my back really, really
badly... And when BF rubbed it it only made it much more
excruciating, so we just went to sleep.
